The Best Contemporary Women's Fiction: Six Novels

by Jenna Blum

  —and on the sixth night of my marriage, when he got into bed, I reached out for him through the dark. I took his hand in mine and I held it firm. Duncan, I said, and I was surprised at how authoritative I sounded, is everything all right? I had rehearsed this during the day, during the many days, I had decided what I would say. Is it me? I said. Is it something I'm doing or not doing? Tell me what to do. You must tell me. He extracted his fingers from mine. He patted my hand. My dear, he said, you must be tired. On the nineteenth night, he suddenly rolled on to me in the dark. I was just drifting off to sleep. It gave me a shock and I couldn't breathe but I lay still and I felt him grip my shoulder with one hand, like a man testing a tennis ball, and I felt his feet paddling at mine and I felt his other hand pulling up the hem of my nightgown and then he made a kind of frantic, tugging motion somewhere lower down and he shifted the hand on my shoulder to my breast and all I could think was, my God, and then he stopped. He stopped dead. He scrambled off me, back to his side of the bed. Oh, he said, and his voice was full of horror, oh, I thought ... and I said, what, you thought what? But he never—

  —doctor called me Mrs Lockhart and he said, what provisions have your family made for when she comes home? For her and the baby?

  ***

  Sister Stewart appears at Esme's bedside early one morning. 'Get yourself up and get your things together.'

  Esme rips back the bedsheets. 'I'm going home,' she says. 'I'm going home. Aren't I?'

  Sister Stewart pushes her face up close. 'I'm not saying yes and I'm not saying no. Now, come on. Be quick about it.'

  Esme pulls her dress over her head and bundles her possessions into its pockets. 'I'm going home,' she calls to Maudie, as she trips down the ward behind Sister Stewart.

  'Good for you, hen,' Maudie replies. 'Come back and see us.'

  Sister Stewart walks down two flights of stairs, along a long corridor, past a row of windows, and Esme sees snatches of sky, of trees, of people walking along the road. She's coming out. There is the world waiting for her. It is all she can do to stop herself pushing past Sister Stewart and breaking into a run. She wonders who will have come to collect her. Kitty? Or just her parents? Surely Kitty will have come, after all this time. She'll be waiting in the foyer with the black and white tiles, sitting on a chair perhaps, her bag balanced on her lap, as it always is, her gloves on just so, and as Esme comes down the stairs she will turn her head, she will turn her head and smile.

  Esme is about to take the flight of stairs leading to the ground floor and Kitty when she realises Sister Stewart is holding open a door for her. Esme steps through. Then Sister Stewart is speaking to another nurse, saying here's Euphemia for you, and the nurse is saying, come on, this way, here's your bed.

  Esme stares at the bed. It is steel, with a coarse cotton cover and has a blanket folded at its end. It is in an empty room with one window, so high up she can see nothing but grey cloud through it. She turns. 'But I'm going home,' she says.

  'No, you're not,' the nurse replies, and reaches out to take her bundle of clothes.

  Esme pulls it away. She can feel that she is about to cry. She is about to cry and she does not think she can stop herself this time. She stamps her foot. 'I am! Dr Naysmith said—'

  'You're to stay here until the baby comes.'

  Esme sees that Sister Stewart is leaning against the wall, watching her, a peculiar smile on her face. 'What baby?' Esme asks.

  Her face is so close to the bed-end that she can see marks on the metal. Scratches or chips in the enamel. She is twisted, contorted, her head pushed back into the mattress, her back arched, and she curls her hands over the marks and watches her fingers turn white. The pain comes up from the core of her and seems to engulf her, storming over her head. Such pain is unimaginable. It will not stop. It has her in a constant, never-weakening grip and she does not think she is going to live. Her time is now. Her time is soon. It is not possible to be in so much pain and not die.

  She tightens her fingers round the marks and she hears someone screaming and screaming, and only then does it occur to her that they are teethmarks. Someone in this ward, in this very bed, has been driven to gnaw the bedpost. She hears herself shout, teeth, teeth.

  'What's she saying?' one of the nurses asks, but she cannot hear the answer. There are two nurses with her, an older one and a younger one. The younger one is nice. She holds her to the bed, like the older one, but not so firmly and, near the beginning of this, she dabbed a cloth over her face when the older nurse wasn't looking.

  They are pressing down on her shoulders, on her shins, saying, lie still now. But she cannot. The pain twists her, it lifts her from the bed, buckles her. The nurses thrust her back to the mattress, again and again. Push, they shout at her, push. Don't push. Push now. Stop pushing. Come on, child.

  Esme has lost sensation in her legs and arms. She can hear a high-pitched shriek and a panting, like that of a sick animal, and the nurse saying, that's it, that's it, keep going, and she thinks that she has heard these sounds before somewhere, somehow, a long time ago, and is it possible that she could have overheard her mother in labour – with Hugo, with one of those other babies? She seems to see herself tiptoeing up to a door, her parents' door in the house in India, and hearing this same pant-pant-pant and the high ululating and the cries of encouragement. And the smell. This hot, wet, salted smell is something she has encountered before. She sees herself at the door, pushing it open and, through the crack, glimpsing what looks for a moment like a painting. The dim room and the white of the sheet with the startling scarlet and the woman's head dark with sweat, bent over in supplication, the attendants gathered round, the steam from a basin. Is is possible she saw this? She bends her own head, gives three short pants, and even this appearance of a small, slick, seal-being has the unreality of something that has happened already.

  Esme turns on to her side and pulls her knees up to her chest. She is washed ashore, shipwrecked. She finds herself examining her hands, which are crumpled near her face. They look the same. And this strikes her as curious, that they should be so unchanged, that they should look just as they have always done. The nurse is severing through something twisted and rope-like and Esme watches as the tiny blue body becomes rinsed with red and the nurse lands a slap on its bottom and turns it over.

  Esme raises herself on an elbow. It takes an immense amount of effort. The baby's eyes are shut tight, the fists held up at the cheeks and its expression is unsure, anxious. Look, the nurse says, a boy, a healthy boy. Esme nods. The nurse swaddles him in a green blanket. And Esme says, 'Can I have him?' The nurse, the young one it is, glances towards the door then back to Esme. 'Well,' she says, still holding the baby. 'Quickly, then.'

  She comes over and lays him in Esme's arms and the weight, the balance of him is oddly familiar. His eyes open and he looks up at her and his gaze is grave, calm, as if he'd been expecting her. She touches his cheek, she touches his forehead, she touches his hand, and it opens and locks tight again round her finger.

  The older nurse is back in the room and she is saying something about papers, but Esme does not listen. The nurse reaches down for the baby; she puts her hands about him.

  'Could we not just give her five minutes?' The younger nurse's voice is soft, pleading.

  'No, we can't,' snaps the older one, and she starts to lift the baby out of Esme's arms.

  And Esme realises what is happening. She snatches the baby away from the nurse. No, she says, no. She slides off the bed with him and her knees give way beneath her but she crawls away, over the floor, the baby grasped to her chest. Come on, Euphemia, she hears the nurse say behind her, don't be naughty, give me the baby. Esme says that she won't, she won't, get away from me. The nurse seizes her arm. Now, listen, she begins, but Esme turns and lands a punch right in her eye. You little, the nurse mutters, staggering backwards, and Esme finds her strength, raises herself up on her legs. For a second, she cannot balance, strangely light as she is after all these months
. But she pushes herself into a run and she makes it past the bed, past the young nurse who, she sees, is coming for her too, towards the door.

  She is there, she is there, she is out, she is through, into the corridor, and she is running towards the staircase and the baby is warm and damp against her shoulder and she thinks that now she might be free, that she will take the baby and go home, that they will not turn her away, and that she could keep on running like this for ever but she hears footsteps behind her and someone catches her round the waist.

  Euphemia, they say, stop it, stop it now. The nurse is there again, the old bitch, and she is puce with anger. She lunges at the shoulder where Esme has the baby but Esme jerks away. There is an alarm sounding around them. The younger nurse has her hands on the baby, Esme's baby, and she is pulling at him and he starts to cry. It's a small eh-heh, eh-heh, eh-heh sound, near Esme's ear. It is her baby, and she is holding on to him, they are not going to get him but the other nurse has her now, she has her arm bent up and she is twisting it into Esme's back and here is pain again and Esme thinks she can bear it and they will not take her baby, but the nurse has her arm round Esme's neck and is pressing in and it's hard to draw breath and she is struggling and she feels she feels she feels her grip on the baby slipping. No, she tries to say, no, no, please. The nurse is getting him, she is getting him, he is gone. He is gone.

  Esme sees the whorl of hair on the crown of his head as the nurse hurries away with him, one clenched starfish hand, she hears the eh-heh eh-heh noise. People, men, big men, are running towards her with straps and needles and jackets. She is pushed to the floor, face down, a puppet without strings, and she sees that all she has of him is the blanket, the green blanket, which has unwound in her hands, empty, and she struggles, she screams, she lifts her head and she sees the feet of the nurse who has her baby, she sees the shoes and the legs as the nurse walks away but she cannot see him. She tries to lift her head further because she wants to see him, one last time, but someone is pushing her face into the tiles and so she must just listen, beneath the screams and the shouts and the alarm, to the footsteps as they recede down the corridor and, eventually, vanish.

  —certainly didn't know. I don't think anyone did. I think we all just expected the man to have the knowledge and to get on with it. I certainly never asked Mother and she never said anything to me. I do remember worrying about it beforehand but then my concerns were different. It never occurred to me that he wouldn't know what—

  —and there were times when I would look at her and wonder what it was about her. Her hair was frizzy, she had freckles because she never would wear a hat in the sun, her hands were uncared-for, her clothes were crumpled, carelessly put on. And of course I would feel guilty then because this was my sister and how could I be thinking these uncharitable thoughts? But, still, I would wonder. Why her? Why her and not me? I was prettier, it was often remarked upon, I was older, closer to his age, in fact. I had skills she would never master. I still think, from time to time, that if he hadn't gone away, it might have been possible for me to—

  —I heard. I heard it all. I was in a room off the corridor, waiting. A nurse came in, then another, and they shut the door, bang, behind them. They looked flustered and they were both breathing hard. That wee, one of them said, then, seeing me, stopped. And we all listened to the screams. There was a gap in the top of the door, so it was very clear, the noise. And I said—

  —and the specialist told me to remove the clothes from the lower half of my body, and it nearly made me sick but I did. I had to look up at the ceiling while he stretched and pulled and I was near to screaming by the time he straightened up. And he was looking nervous. My dear, he said, you are, ah, you are still intact. Do you understand me? I said yes, but the truth was I didn't. Have you not yet, he said, as he fussed about, washing his hands, his back to me, had relations with your husband? I said yes. I said I had. I said I thought I had. Hadn't I? The doctor looked down at his notes and said, my dear, no. And that night I sat on the edge of the bed and I tried not to cry, I tried really hard, and I repeated to Duncan the phrases that the doctor had used, I—

  —time for a biscuit, that woman thinks. I wish she would go away. I wish they would all go away. How one can be lonely while constantly surrounded by people is beyond me. How am I to exist if—

  —tried to pick up clues, girls did in those days, but it was all so hazy. You knew it happened in bed, at night, and that it was expected to be painful but, beyond that, it was veiled. I did think about asking my grandmother but—

  —no, I do not want a custard-cream biscuit. There is nothing I want less. Will these people never—

  —and the screaming stopped so suddenly. And after it there was such a silence. I said, what has happened? And the nurse nearest me said, nothing. They've sedated her. Don't you worry, she said, she'll have a nice sleep and when she wakes up she'll have forgotten all about it. And then I saw the baby. I hadn't noticed him until then. The nurse saw me looking and she brought him over to me and put him in my arms. And I gazed down at him and something overcame me. I was close, then, to changing my mind, to saying, no, I don't want him after all. He smelt of her.

  He smelt of her.

  I have never got over this.

  But then I—

  —thought they might be words he would understand. I said them to him: penetration, I said, and a release of fluid. I had learnt them like I had learnt French verbs, a long time before. I thought it would help. I thought it might fix the problem. I had put on my rose nightgown. But he leant over and picked up his pillow and then he walked across the room. I think until he reached the door I didn't actually believe he was going. I thought, perhaps he is just pacing about, perhaps he is going to fetch something. But no. He reached the door, he opened it, he left, he shut it behind him. And something in me shut too. And it was only the next day when I hid from him and my parents and I went to the hospital where I was intercepted by the doctor who said—

  —the smell of that biscuit is nauseating. I will pick it up and push it under that cushion and that way I won't be able to smell—

  —so I gazed down at the baby because I thought I couldn't do it, I thought I would have to give him back, and then I saw who he looked like. I saw it. I don't think, until that moment, I'd fully realised what had happened, what she had done. She had done that with him. And in me rose an anger. How had she known and not me? She was younger than me, she wasn't as pretty as me, she certainly wasn't as accomplished as me, she wasn't even married and yet she had managed to—

  —went there because, in truth, I didn't know where else to go. Mother wouldn't have helped and I couldn't have told her, we just didn't have that kind of conversation, the visit to the specialist doctor hadn't helped, in fact it had made it worse. And I did want a baby so badly. It was like an ache in my head, a stone in my shoe. It is a terrible thing to want something you cannot have. It takes you over. I couldn't think straight because of it. There was no one else, I realised, whom I could possibly tell. And I missed her. I missed her. It had been months since she had gone away, so I took a taxi-cab. I was excited, on the way, so excited. I couldn't think why I hadn't done this before. I kept thinking about the look on her face when I walked in. But when the doctor intercepted me before I got to her and when he said what he said, about her, about a baby, I just—

  —never came back to our room. He slept down the corridor, and when Mother died and I inherited the house we moved there and he took the room that had been my grandmother's, while I had the one I had shared with—

  And she holds the photograph. She holds it in her hands. She looks at it and she knows. She thinks about those numbers again, the twos and the eights, which together make eighty-two and also twenty-eight. And she thinks about what happened to her once on the twenty-eighth day of a month in late summer. Or, rather, she doesn't think about it. She never needs to. It is running in her mind, always and for ever. She has it, all of the time, she hears it. She is it.

/>   She knows who this man is. She knows who he was. She sees it all now. She glances round the room that used to hold their summer clothes all winter long in cedar chests – lightly folded dresses of cotton and muslin that they hardly ever, in the Edinburgh climate, wore. On bright days in August, they might have shaken them out, aired them, buttoned them on. She doesn't remember how often this happened. But instead of the tall chest with many shallow drawers that her mother found so useful for her print blouses and light shawls there is a television. It casts a guttering, bluish pall over the room.

  She looks again at the photograph of the man. He is holding a child on his shoulders. They are outside. Tree branches reach down into the frame from above. He is half tilting his face up to say something to the child. She has her fingers gripped in his hair; his are curled round her ankles, holding her fast, as if he is afraid she might float up into the clouds if he were to let go.

  Esme examines the man's face and she sees, in its planes and angles, the set of the head, everything she ever wanted to know. She sees this, she understands this: he was mine. She seems to hold out her arms for this knowledge and she takes it. She puts it on, like an old overcoat. He was mine.